


o lord! the voice don't lie.

by prophesyr



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 06:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18148340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prophesyr/pseuds/prophesyr
Summary: '   in the beginning, before our movement found its footing, its name—there was the voice. and in the voice was the reason, hope, and birth of what we now call the project at eden’s gate.   '—sermon, the project at eden's gate.





	o lord! the voice don't lie.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally on prophesyr @ tumblr for the Hope County Gothic 2018 event.

**HE HEARD IT FIRST AS A DISTANT RUMBLE,** gradual and rolling with the coming storm. The lightning, his father held in his fists, in his words, in the assured raise of his Bible. It came in flashes—something like hope between them. Maybe that was the last. Maybe this next one, the next. He lost count, young Joseph Seed, somewhere between the eastern bluebirds’ exultation and the disquieting tinker of Mother’s wind chimes.  
  
          _Did they ever stop?_  
  
          ‘   Look at me,   ‘     his father _**spit**_ , buried within an accent as murky as it was thick, and Joseph did as he was told.     ‘   You see this? Don’t you stand there with y’mouth open. Answer me. **What’s this look like to you?**   ‘  
  
          To the best of his ability, he blurted,     ‘   It’s a comic book… _s-sir_.   ’     He meant to sound louder, more _**sure**_ of himself. With a little more conviction, maybe this time wouldn’t be so bad. Too late, he learned how to grasp that **certainty** in the shaky cluch of his seven-year-old fist. An ill-controlled sob punctuated his words just a few seconds later. No longer could he give the **ILLUSION** of strength. Now, as he would be told time and time again, he was only crying to be heard.  
  
          A laugh rumbled through Old Mad Seed, now towering above his son, both in stature and subsistence. _**Only now**_ could Joseph understand the weight his mistake. That lesson was given with the sting of a silver ring to the boy’s left cheek.     ‘   This,   ’     his father hissed before landing the next blow and the next,     ‘   is the **DEVIL’S CORRUPTION**. And I’ll be damned if I’d let my own flesh and blood succumb to this—garbage.   ‘  
  
          From his pocket, the old man produced the same lighter he used on his cigarettes, the ones that smelled like burnt beans and dust. It flickered once, twice, and the third spark caught Spider-Man’s leg in a slow, meticulous blaze. Had it not been for the **pounding** below his temple, a stream of tears might have loosed from his son’s eyes. It wasn’t even Joseph’s, but a boy one whole grade above himself who had taken pity. Now, Joseph would never be trusted. _ **It didn’t bother him, somehow**_ ; it only served to deepen the hollow chill within his chest, his own soul as glazed as his eyes.  
  
                    ‘   Do you know where you are?   ’  
  
          The Voice came in silence. It did not confine itself to a plane of **true existence**. It did not carry the calming rumble of a storm or the unnerving buzz of a mosquito. He could feel it behind his eyes and in the clench of his teeth. It raised tension in his shoulders, forming a stone-stiff **ACHING**  in his fingertips. Spoken in the lap of the flame, it exhaled life into the fire in Old Mad Seed’s hand and echoed with the thump of paper as the book dropped to what little pavement preceded the Seeds’ porch. In _**unplaceable**_ tongues, both dead and new, it whispered beneath the scent of the coming autumn, despite the clear July afternoon. On its breath, it carried the   **p r o m i s e** of destruction and hope. Buried in the stomp and drag of his father’s boot against the pavement, it led him through the paradise of tomorrow.  
  
                    Again it asked,     ‘   Do you understand?   ’          And he did.  
  
          **HOW JOSEPH WISHED HE COULD BEAR** the strength of his brother. Jacob felt pain as any other ; he wore it as a badge of honor. Every bruise was another story, every cracked tooth and scar was a testament to his own   **b r a v e r y**. So often, the eldest Seed had faced down the beast. He held out his chest and took more than his own beatings in the name of playing the protector. And what had Joseph done, if not allow it? Three years from knowing this earth for a full decade, and already he understood the weight of that **GUILT**.  
  
          A belt, a switch, a hand raised to Joseph, and Jacob stood his ground between them. It became a daily routine between them. Repetitious, monotonous, almost _**boring**_ toward the end—but then, one day, Old Mad Seed turned his rage to John.  
  
          This cause was no better than any other. Mail sat   **s t r e w n** from the front door to the couch, some pieces **torn** and discarded while John sat among the rest. And rather than hone in on the ghost which wore the face of their mother, the woman who tossed the post to the wayside and in easy reach of a **_TODDLER_** , the old man yanked John from the sitting room floor by his arm. The youngest Seed’s screams were loud enough to bring his brothers sprinting inside.  
  
          **Before then, John never cried.**  
  
          Decades from now, Joseph would remember in heartrending clarity the layout of the living room. He would recall the unique pattern of each wood panel, the **HOSTILE** orange of the shag carpet, the suffocating placement of the couch. Their mother, just as she would with her other children, would not come to John’s rescue. And their father, may he rot in hell, taught John what was meant by _**‘righteous fury.’**_ In the deepest recesses of Joseph’s mind, Jacob’s anger would brand itself. No more could he ask, _what happens when he resents us the way he does our father?_ But until the day life or death separated them permanently, Jacob would always bare his teeth in the name of his brothers’ safety.  
  
                    ‘   Do you know your purpose?   ’     it asked in the crack of John’s whimpers. The second time he heard the Voice, it screamed,     ‘   **_Stop_** ,   ’     until it was hoarse.  
**  
****THE THIRD, HE CHASED FROM HIS MIND SO LONG AGO,** so desperately that it still would haunt even his waking dreams years later. It came in the subtle hum of fluorescent lights and a pounding in the forefront of his head, so **_tireless_** , he could swear his eyes would burst. A hand raised to shield them in confusion, mild at first, and then jolted into a panic which would not leave for three days.  
  
          With a kindness he could not grasp, Joseph was settled back into his cot by a fresh-faced nurse. She did not deserve the fear on his tongue. And the responsibility of telling him the **fate** of his wife was a burden none should have bore. The truth deafened his ears, but the Voice found a way. He found it in the _**sympathetic contortion**_ of her face, marked between the eyes with a **CROSS** unlike what he had ever seen. In written word, wherever his eyes may rest, he found its hints laid out for all to see. On bulletins, dry erase boards, his own health reports, it always found a way.  
  
                    ‘   Just as the Lord has granted you the day,   ’     it   ** _h i s s e d_  ** behind the well wishes of his nurse,     ‘   so too shall you revel in **His night**.   ’  
  
          Only when he felt calm enough to accept a glass of water was a doctor willing to speak with him.     ‘   She survived ;  your daughter will live,   ‘     was the **false hope** he first instilled in a grieving father, and for a moment, Joseph believed it. But as he watched over that incubator, it became **_CLEAR_** what he meant—your daughter could live, and she would, if she had someone better than you. All it would cost was the low price of **everything he did not own,** alongside his wife’s funeral expenses, potential court dates for the accident, and his own hospital bills.  
  
          Static was in everything. Strangers’ condolences, the rustling of the wind outside, her weak cries… It was in his own skin, settled for three days with the taste of iron on his tongue. And all the while, the Voice remained, hushed albeit **RELENTLESS**.  
  
          His own legs were naught but stitching and bandages. Never had they seen such a miracle, they said, that he had broken nothing, let alone lived to **bear witness** to the true power of the Voice. In the form of a man far too old and frail to still hold his right mind, as Joseph idly watched the world outside joyously   _ **c o n t i n u e**_ from the common room window, it collapsed at the side of his wheelchair. Hands coated in age spots found one of his and held it with an iron grip.  
  
                    ‘   You cannot ignore your **purpose** ,   ’     it confided in him.     ‘   Don’t suffer beneath the anchor of your conscience ;  don’t prolong the inevitable. **SHE IS GOING TO DIE.**   ’  
  
          ‘   Let me go,   ’     he commanded through tears and the _tremor_ in his captive hand.     ‘   Please.   ’  
  
          But it wouldn’t. It clamped tighter, and the old man’s eyes began its   **r e q u i s i t i o n**  in the voices of a thousand nations,     ‘   Let **her** go,   ’   one hand released his, and the elder grasped Joseph by the back of his neck, forcing the touch of their foreheads in desperation.     ‘   _**Pray with me, Father.**_ Your children need you.   ’  
  
          At that moment, a nurse rushed over and pulled the man to his feet. The urgency in his eyes was long **gone** , as was the inhuman strength in his hands. No longer did he know where he was or to whom he was speaking. _**Dementia,**_ the woman told him,     ‘   No need to worry. Alvin hasn’t spoken a full sentence in years.   ’     And they left Joseph there to piece together the last truth he wanted to hear—that come that night, he would have **nothing**. No home, no wife, and no daughter.  
**  
****THE BLOWS KEPT COMING, KNUCKLES BLOODIED** as they dug again and again into his stomach, his shoulders, his face. By now, three ribs and his left collarbone must have been cracked, if not broken. He can’t feel it ;  if he tried, Joseph may feel **nothing else** but that blinding pain for the rest of his short life. How he longed for tonight to mark the end of it. Would it be so tragic to find a **nobody** like him curled in on himself in a dark alley?  
  
          It happened every day to men more _**innocent**_.  
  
          ‘   My turn,   ’     one laughed into the night. In Joseph’s eyes, his assailants bore a glow of dim white, and his mind screamed—at last, **it’s time.** The men traded their hold, and the one calling the shots drove his first punch.  
  
          Something cracked. His jaw, he thought, and only with the cool line of crimson down his cheek did he feel the zygomatic fracture beneath his left eye. If pain were no more than a sound, a piercing scream would have _**SPLIT**_ the ears of all of Atlanta. It pulled tears from him, uncontrolled as the wind, though the sobs that threatened to break past his throat lay on the wind as nothing more than a sigh. He would have **fought** , had he the strength or reason. When they would find him, no one would ask if he fought back. No one will know the clench of his fists or the pleas just to leave him be. No one would care who Joseph Seed was. The man was a   **g h o s t** in life, and he would be no more remarkable in death.  
  
          He should have thought—No. He should have known. Whether it were to happen now or in fifty years, when all he had to look back upon were countless nights of pointless, overzealous longing, spawned by a **DELUSION**  in childhood, he was always destined for an end such as this. Pathetic, empty… alone. A bitter smile pulled at only his mouth, leaving the loss in his eyes untouched to through the glassy sheen of his own personal grievance. **  
**  
          If ever there _**was**_ a God, He was not on Joseph’s side.  
  
          With the ache of **rejection** once again in his throat, Joseph all but called to the heavens, the Voice, his creator, what every man at rock bottom secretly wonders night after night, _Why did I ever trust you?_  
  
          Mother Earth answered in kind. She cried back to him, her voice deafening against the weakened heartbeat of the city. It was in the reddened sky and the _**quake**_ beneath his feet ;  she mourned over humanity, as she had for decades now, perhaps centuries. She lost it in mankind’s battles— **both great and personal** —in the hate in which they vomited their unsolicited opinions and the guns taking countless lives upon her skin. Cease, she begged, yet they continued to beat each other and themselves mercilessly, as **violence** is the only language all humans could speak. She revolted for and craved a simpler time, and in that longing, her skies adhered to an inky black, and Death’s Voice held fast to its dominion.  
  
                    ‘   —Do you know where you are, my son?   ’  
  
          ‘   I’m here,   ’     he found himself reciting like an old verse from his father’s Good Book. The same book which left welts on his back and shoulders. The same book he still **feared**. The air in his lungs was no longer frozen in vigilance, his sight no longer obscured by his own hubris. He stood in an open field,   _ **e m p t y**_ in every right. In the distance, the sun readied itself for the coming night, casting the world around him in an auburn surrealism.     ‘   i’m **home**.   ’  
  
          As far as the eye could see, fields of foreign flora blossomed in silent worship, and it felt like instinct— **white trumpets,** all faced to the stars above, which now rejoiced in their distant fervor. Each sun held its own set of worlds with their own versions of the same _**painfully**_ human race.  
  
          An unseen hand rested upon his shoulder, and Joseph’s worries eased blissfully into the flowers. At long last, his oldest friend had returned with greater news than any channel would air.     ‘   You are his will, his **chosen** ,   ‘     it said, and he felt himself filled to the brim with its words. His eyes stayed cast to the vast galaxy beyond his earth, fixed to the countless possibilities of yesterday, today, tomorrow. One by one, the stars expanded in a fiery splendor, spectacular and haunting as a lonesome display of **FIREWORKS**. In grandiose succession, the worlds before him burst and fell to the ground surrounding, tiny and insignificant as a dying campfire.  
  
          It only took one. A single flame settled into the open mouth of a trumpet, and it sparked a wildfire hotter than Old Mad Seed ever described as _**Hell**_. The Earth groaned again, breaking into a scream as her surface split open to devour the landscape. The ground shifted and rose, the rest **falling** beneath an illimitable sea. With each flower burned or swallowed or drowned, another face distorted itself it its place.  
  
          This place was naught but decay. **The world was created to die.**  
  
          _—   on the horizon, though, lay a hope._  
                   ‘   You shall lead those that wish to become a part of something greater than this world is now. You will walk through hellfire and be **BORNE ANEW**. Through the pain and suffering you will ascend, you will be loathed, you will be adored. You will evolve beyond all of it.   ’  
  
          His breath shuddered. Questions   _ **s w a r m e d**_   his mind, but he hadn’t that kind of time.     ‘   I understand.   ’   And he did. To create, one must destroy. To thrive, one must be pruned. To survive, one must purge. **This was not his purpose ;**  he was chosen to save those who could build that better world, those who could sit with Mother Earth and help her exhale a new future, one without society and _**civilization**_. One where humanity could once again flourish.  
  
                    ‘   Everything you have loved will be **SACRIFICED**!   ’     the Voice warned, and it still felt more welcoming than anything he had known.     ‘   Everything you have ever cared for will **die**.   ’  
  
          Everything he cared for would turn to dust. Already, it lay in ash across the Atlanta skyline. No more would he know a love so human, though the **soaring** in his chest brought the offering of something deeper, something more prevailing than a warm body at his side. Again, tears stung his eyes. A _**captivated**_ smile left his mouth agape, his brows twisted in unadulterated awe. This was the end of the world, and he had never been so ready for it as this very moment. May this failed world order fall **DESTITUTE**  to its knees in the face of its creators, its destructors, and its countless gods.  
  
         ‘   Take it. Take all that I am. _**Shape me into your own**_ —I’m yours.   ’  
  
          The world fell flat again, buildings jutting around him in the same haggard placement they had before. His eye was swollen shut now, and copper coated his tongue. The men were shouting once more, laughing, and then… **an eerie silence.** Their leader said something distant. Their grip loosened. Joseph dropped to the ground, and he pieced it together.     _This guy’s fucked up._     His hand raised to his own grin as they left. His fingertips came back   ** _t r e m b l i n g_** and bloody.  
  
          And in his mind echoed a noise like thunder, the Voice’s final words,  
                    ‘   Joseph, it is time.   ’  



End file.
